The Labour leader insists he asked Gordon Brown to sack Mr McBride because of his ‘reprehensible’ briefings against colleagues.

But Mr McBride says he and Mr Miliband worked together for eight years and enjoyed ‘four years of real friendship’.

Friends?: Ed Miliband, left, shared 'four years of real friendship' with the spin doctor he blasted as 'reprehensible', according to an extract of Damian McBride's memoirs, Power Trip

In the latest extracts from his explosive memoir, serialised in the Daily Mail, he claims Mr Miliband – far from being concerned about smears against other politicians – only complained when he felt the spin doctor had undermined him by revealing his part in Gordon Brown’s botched decision not to call an election in 2007.

Distance: Ed Miliband tried to distance himself from the controversy on The Andrew Marr Show yesterday

DOUGLAS ALEXANDER LEAKED TO THE PRESS, MEMOIRS REVEAL

Douglas Alexander has been implicated in the leak of a hugely damaging account of how Gordon Brown was once snubbed five times by Barack Obama.

A source close to the shadow foreign secretary is said to have told the Press about Mr Brown’s disastrous New York trip in 2009, when he was only able to snatch a chat with the President in a UN kitchen.

Allegations about the source of the leak are made in the explosive memoirs of Damian McBride.

Yesterday, Mr Alexander said at a party conference meeting he had ‘paid a price’ for opposing Mr McBride’s ‘destructive’ style of politics and had wanted him sacked.

But Mr McBride replied on Twitter: ‘When Douglas poses as the voice of probity and unity, I draw the line.’

Why? Because that created the impression he'd been wronged by someone close to Gordon and Ed Balls. That, in turn, allowed him to get some distance from the sinking ship in Number Ten, plus some victim status with Labour MPs.'

Mr McBride’s sensational book lifts the lid on years of amoral feuding, plotting and character assassination at the heart of Labour and has overshadowed the start of its annual conference.

Other key revelations in the latest extracts include:

How Mr Brown plotted to put Ed Balls in charge of economic policy to undermine Alistair Darling. After calls at the weekend for Darling to return to the shadow cabinet, McBride warns it would be disastrous to recall the ‘catastrophically inept’ former chancellor;

He confesses to smearing John Major and Norman Lamont over the Black Wednesday, financial crisis while still a supposedly neutral civil servant funded by the tax payer.

He reveals details of Mr Brown’s wild rages and how he attacked BBC political editor Nick Robinson as a ‘f****** Tory’;

He admits leaking dozens of Budget secrets.

Mr McBride’s book Power Trip, to be published this week, has revealed how the former spin doctor has confessed to discrediting Mr Brown’s enemies and rivals by tipping off the media about drug use, spousal abuse, alcoholism and extra-marital affairs.

It has proved acutely embarrassing for Mr Miliband and Mr Balls, since they were at the heart of what has been branded a ‘malign and awful’ political operation run by Mr Brown.

On BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show yesterday, Mr Miliband was asked whether he could ‘look into your heart during that period and say to yourself that you were completely clean’.

The Labour leader insisted he had not been part of the brutal culture of spin and smear, adding: ‘I was concerned about the activities of Damian McBride and indeed I complained to Gordon Brown.

‘I was worried that there were indications that he was briefing against colleagues and I didn’t think that was the way politics should be practised.’

But in today’s book extracts, Mr McBride says Mr Miliband dumped him solely to further his own political career.

Mr McBride recalls Mr Miliband calling him and declaring ‘we are finished’ in a voice like a computer’s.

A VERY BRAZEN ASSASSIN: THE SERIES CAUSING A FURORE

Ed Miliband: ‘I was concerned about the activities of Damian McBride and indeed I complained to Gordon Brown. I was worried he was briefing against colleagues and I didn’t think that was the way politics should be practised.’

Former Cabinet Minister Dame Tessa Jowell: ‘Gordon [Brown] is not an innocent, it is inconceivable he did not know what Damian was doing. Damian clearly felt it was implicitly sanctioned. In the absence of a very clear statement by Gordon that he didn’t know about it, it damages his reputation.’

Former Spin doctor Alastair Campbell: ‘He [Gordon Brown] had a real flaw for this need for truly horrible people to be around him, doing truly horrible things and giving him, the Labour Party, and politics, a bad name. I am still angry about Damian McBride.’

Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna: ‘If any good comes from Damian McBride’s indulgence, it’s to remind people that that’s not the way we do things. Everybody who was around then, and is still around, knows how damaging that was. Think how much more we could have achieved if so much energy had not been expended on this nonsense.’

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper: ‘It happened some years ago, but I think it’s a sign of how much the Labour Party has changed. The very different climate, the very different way in which Ed Miliband is managing things and operating things now, that’s a good thing. We don’t want to go back to the navel-gazing of the past.’

Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls: ‘He was a law unto himself, it now seems.’